Digital Industry Change

Digital transformation will be imperative

By 2050, global demand for chemicals will be 50% higher than in 2020, and even under a net-zero emissions scenario, the International Energy Agency (IEA) believes that oil will continue to be the primary feedstock for the production of chemicals. Then sulfuric acid, as a basic chemical raw material, also occupies an important position in the chemical industry. According to statistics, about 65 million tons of sulfur are produced globally each year, while about 250 million tons of sulfuric acid are consumed globally each year for the production of food, energy and health-related products. Since sulfur resources are non-renewable, the annual shortage of about 17 million tons of sulfur requires the extraction of sulfur resources from other sulfides. In the era of net zero emissions, the popularization of new energy and the continuous growth of population make sulfuric acid resources and the goal of achieving net zero emissions become a complex double challenge. In order to make the sulfuric acid industry healthy and sustainable development, the use of digital sulfur resource recycling and efficient production is to solve the challenges facing the sulfuric acid industry in the future.

The key to the success of digital transformation in sulfuric acid industry is how to apply digital technology

① Traditional technology efficient production

The digitization of operational data in traditional sulfuric acid production is the key to the efficient operation of the sulfuric acid industry, a widely accepted view, but the actual implementation of digitization is a difficult challenge. Sulfuric acid industry managers have realized that the digital transformation of sulfuric acid is more difficult to achieve than the reform of new technology application, because the sulfuric acid industry after nearly 20 years of rapid development, sulfuric acid industry technicians are subdivided into independent professional, so that sulfuric acid production technology is fragmented, and digital technology requires multi-professional integration of composite professional. Use digital technology to analyze the operational data. Make device operation and device health transparent. Today's digital support has brought more convenience to our project design and production management, and the intelligent operation of equipment and data analysis have also played an important role in improving the quality of decision making and are enabling a more autonomous way of working. It is with digital intervention that sulfuric acid production can take an important step towards digital transformation.

② Digital technology process innovation

In the rapid development of AI technology, the sulfuric acid industry's use of AI technology for process innovation is a tool that must be applied for the sustainable development of the sulfuric acid industry in the future. The original intention of the establishment of Lilly Technology is to use AI technology to achieve sulfuric acid technology process innovation, we will use AI technology to achieve process optimization, mainly focusing on the three-tower cycle absorption, heat exchanger structure, converter structure and new device process design technical review and optimization. The future sulfuric acid plant must be highly intelligent, short process flow and large-scale device. We predict that in the next sulfuric acid plant construction period is expected to be in (2032) the newly built sulfuric acid plant sulfuric acid plant will adopt a new short-process process, the scale of a single set of devices will reach 2 million tons, and the automatic control of the device will reach L4 digital automation. The technologies that need to use AI technology to overcome the sulfuric acid industry are

③ Digital technology recycling of sulfur resources

With the increase of net zero emissions and population, sulfur resources will become increasingly strained, and it is expected that there will be a global shortage of sulfur resources in 2040. Realizing the recycling of sulfur resources is the most effective way to solve the shortage of sulfur resources. At present, sulfur dioxide to sulfur, phosphogypsum to sulfuric acid and other sulfur resource recycling technologies have been developed. Unable to achieve industry-wide recycling of sulfur resources, in order to solve the global shortage of sulfur resources in 2040, it is necessary to use digital technology to find a breakthrough in the technical bottlenecks and production costs of sulfur resource recycling.